HEALTH Secretary Shona Robison yesterday said “more needs to be done to improve the performance” of Scotland’s health service after official figures published yesterday found key waiting times targets for treatment were being missed.

The Scottish Government data revealed that from April to June this year the health service failed to treat some 4,000 patients – around 5 per cent – within its a 12-week maximum guarantee.

In June, the health service also failed to meet its target to treat 90 per cent of patients within 18 weeks from the point they were referred by their family doctor.

Across NHS Scotland, 88.3 per cent of patients were reported as being seen within the target time, down from 91.1 per cent compared with the same period in the previous year.

Referring to the 12-week treatment time guarantee, Robison said: “Health boards across Scotland continue to deliver some of the lowest waiting times on record, with more than 875,000 patients treated within our 12-week treatment time guarantee since it was introduced in October 2012.

“However, more clearly needs to be done to maintain and improve on performance in order to meet the rightly demanding targets we have set. Patients should expect nothing less.”

Robison said a series of measures were being taken to reduce waiting times, including millions of pounds of targeted support and an outpatient delivery and improvement programme which will aim to “better the services outpatients receive and in turn improve waiting times”.

Meanwhile, the latest A&E waiting time figures show that 94.2 per cent of patients were seen and subsequently admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours during the week ending August 16 – just missing the Scottish Government’s interim target of 95 per cent.

Robison said: “Weekly A&E performance continues to fluctuate, with today’s figures showing 94.2 per cent of patients seen within four hours at core A&E sites.

“We have moved on considerably from when weekly reporting began in February, with performance during the week ending August 16 being 8.1 percentage points above that of the week ending February 22. However, I am clear that more needs to be done to continue to improve performance.”

She added: “Our focus now is to maintain this improving trend in performance – particularly as we head towards winter.

“We want to see long-term, sustainable change put in place in order to maintain this high level of performance during peaks and troughs of demand.”

Robison also highlighted improvements in A&E waiting times at the new Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow.

A support team was sent in for two weeks in June after A&E performance fell to 78.6 per cent. Latest A&E performance at the hospital is 94.8 per cent.

“It is pleasing to see that the initial improvement in performance achieved during the support team’s time at the hospital has continued in recent weeks, with performance at the Queen Elizabeth 16.2 percentage points higher than week ending June 14 when the support team arrived on site.”

Elsewhere, the waiting-times target for child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) services was also missed.

The Scottish Government set a target for a maximum wait of 26 weeks from a patient’s referral to treatment for specialist CAMH services from March 2013, reducing to 18 weeks from December 2014. The target should be delivered for at least 90 per cent of patients. New figures show that in the three months to the end of June, 85.2 per cent of patients were seen within 26 weeks and 76.6 per cent were seen within 18 weeks.

An 18-week treatment target for psychological therapies was only met by four health boards in the three months to the end of June.

Scottish Labour public services spokesman Dr Richard Simpson, a former GP and psychiatrist, said he believed the statistics showed the NHS was under huge strain in a number of areas.

“It is very worrying to see continual missed targets in child mental health services. Having worked as a psychiatrist for over 20 years I know that delays to treatment only aggravate stress and can worsen a child’s condition,” he said.

“The SNP made a promise to patients in Scotland, and gave them a legal right to be seen within 12 weeks. This week we see that law has been broken over 4,000 times in the last few months. It is simply astonishing.

“They set our NHS targets for patients to be seen within certain time frames, but have not given our NHS the support to meet these targets.”

Alison Johnstone MSP, the Scottish Greens’ health spokesperson, said: “The Scottish Government and health boards need to renew their efforts to tackle recruitment problems. We need better connections within the NHS to smooth the flow of patients through the system.”